
(lasslL UJ^QJ^^ Imprint 



Author - 



Title. 



Book 



AzZs3z. 



ui—ivnaf^-i Gpo 



MY REMINISCENCES 



BY 
RABINDRANATH TAGORE 



Translated by 
SURENDRANATH TAGORE 



J^etD lorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1916 

Alt rights reserved 



MY REMINISCENCES 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO 
SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

IX)N1X)N • BOMBAY ■ CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lfa 

TORONTO 



MY REMINISCENCES 



BY 
RABINDRANATH TAGORE 



Translated by 
SURENDRANATH TAGORE 



^efctJ lorfe 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1916 

jtU rights reiervtd 









Copyright, 1916 
By the macmillan company 

Published October, 1916 







MY REMINISCENCES 

(30) Evening Songs. 

In the state of being confined within myself, of which 
I have been telHng-, I wrote a number of poems which 
have been grouped together, under the description of the 
Heart-Wilderness, in Mohita Babu's edition of my 
works. In one of the poems subsequently published in a 
volume called Morning Songs, the following lines occur : 

There is a vast wilderness whose name is Heart; 

Whose interlacing forest branches dandle and rock darkness 

like an infant. 

I lost my way in its depths, 
from which came the idea of the title of this group of 
poems. 

Much of what I wrote, when thus my life had no 
commerce with the outside, when I was engrossed in the 
contemplation of my own heart, when my imaginings, 
wandered in many a disguise amidst causeless emotions 
and aimless longings, has been left out of that edition; 
only a few of the poems originally published in the vol- 
ume entitled Evening Songs finding a place there, under 
the Heart-Wilderness group. 

My brother Jyotirindra and his wife had left home 
travelling on a long journey, and their rooms on the 
third storey, facing the terraced-roof, were empty. I 
took possession of these and the terrace, and spent my 
days in solitude. While thus left in communion with 



6 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

my self alone, I know not how I slipped out of the 
poetical groove into which I had fallen. Perhaps being 
cut off from those whom I sought to please, and whose 
taste in poetry moulded the form I tried to put my 
thoughts into, I naturally gained freedom from the style 
they had imposed on me. 

I began to use a slate for my writing. That also 
helped in my emancipation. The manuscript books in 
which I had indulged before seemed to demand a certain 
height of poetic flight, to work upto which I had to find 
my way by a comparison with others. But the slate was 
clearly fitted for my mood of the moment. "Fear not," 
it seemed to say. "Write just what you please, one rub 
will wipe all away!" 

As I wrote a poem or two, thus unfettered, I felt a 
great joy well up within me. "At last," said my heart, 
"What I write is my own !" Let no one mistake this for 
an accession of pride. Rather did I feel a pride in my 
former productions, as being all the tribute I had to pay 
them. But I refuse to call the realization of self, self- 
sufficiency. The joy of parents in their first-born is not 
due to any pride in its appearance, but because it is their 
very own. If it happens to be an extraordinary child 
they may also glory in that — but that is different. 

In the first flood-tide of that joy I paid no heed to 
the bounds of metrical form, and as the stream does not 
flow straight on but winds about as it lists, so did my 
verse. Before, I would have held this to be a crime, but 
now I felt no compunction. Freedom first breaks the 
law and then makes laws which brings it under true 
Self-rule. 

The only listener I had for these erratic poems of 
mine was Akshay Babu. When he heard them for the 
first time he was as surprised as he was pleased, and 



MY REMINISCENCES 7 

with his approbation my road to freedom was widened. 

The poems of Vihari Chakravarti were in a 3-beat 
metre. This triple time produces a rounded-off globular 
effect, unlike the square-cut multiple of 2. It rolls on 
with ease, it glides as it dances to the tinkling of its 
anklets. I was once very fond of this metre. It felt 
more like riding a bicycle than walking. Aind to this 
stride I had got accustomed. In the Evening Songs, 
without thinking of it, I somehow broke off this habit. 
Nor did I come under any other particular bondage. I 
felt entirely free and unconcerned. I had no thought or 
fear of being taken to task. 

The strength I gained by working, freed from the 
tramels of tradition, led me to discover that I had been, 
searching in impossible places for that which I had 
within myself. Nothing but want of self-confidence had 
stood in the way of my coming into my own. I felt like 
rising from a dream of bondage to find myself un- 
shackled. I cut extraordinary capers just to make sure 
I was free to move. 

To me this is the most memorable period of my poetic 
career. As poems my Evening Songs may not have been 
worth much, in fact as such they are crude enough. 
Neither their metre, nor language, nor thought has taken 
definite shape. Their only merit is that for the first time 
I had come to write what I really meant, just according" 
to my pleasure. What if those compositions have no 
value, that pleasure certainly had. 

(31) An Essay on Music. 

I was proposing to study for the bar when my father 
recalled me home from England. Some friends con- 
cerned at this cutting short of my career pressed him 
to send me off once again. This led to my starting on 



8 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

a second voyage towards England, this time with a rela- 
tive as my companion. My fate, however, had so strong- 
ly vetoed my being called to the bar that I was not even 
to reach England this time. For a certain reason we 
had to disembark at Madras and return home to Cal- 
cutta. The reason was by nO' means as grave as its 
outcome, but as the laugh was not against me, I refrain 
from setting it down here. From both my attempted 
pilgrimages to Lakshtni's^- shrine I had thus to come 
back repulsed. I hope, however, that the Law-god, at 
least, will look on me with a favorable eye for that I 
have not added to the encumbrances on the Bar-library 
premises. 

My father was then in the Mussoorie hills. I went to 
him in fear and trembling. But he showed no sign of 
irritation, he rather seemed pleased. He must have 
seen in this return of mine the blessing of Divine Provi- 
dence. 

The evening before I started on this voyage I read a 
paper at the Medical College Hall on the invitation of 
the Bethune Society. This was my first public reading. 
The Reverend K. M. Banerji was the president. The 
subject was Music. Leaving aside instrumental music, I 
tried to make out that to better bring out what the words 
sought to express was the chief end and aim of vocal 
music. The text of my paper was but meagre. I 
throughout sang and acted songs illustrating my theme. 
The only reason for the flattering eulogy which the Pres- 
ident bestowed on me at the end must have been the 
moving effect of my young voice together with the earn- 
estness and variety of its efforts. But I must make the 

*The Goddess of Wealth. 



MY REMINISCENCES 9 

confession to-day that the opinion I voiced with such 
enthusiasm that day was wrong. 

The art of vocal music has its own special functions 
and features. And when it happens to be set to words 
the latter must not presume too much on their oppor- 
tunity and seek to supersede the melody of which they 
are but the vehicle. The song is great in its own wealth, 
why should it wait upon the words? Rather does it 
begin where mere words fail. Its power lies in the 
region of the inexpressible ; it tells us what the words 
cannot. 

So the less a song is burdened with words the better. 
In the classic style of Hindusthanf the words are of no 
account and leave the melody to prefer its plaint in its 
own way. Vocal music reaches its perfection when the 
melodic form is allowed to develop freely, and carry our 
consciousness with it to its own wonderful plane. In 
Bengal, however, the words have always asserted them- 
selves so, that our provincial song has failed to develop 
her full musical capabilities, and has remained content 
as the handmaiden of her sister art of poetry. From the 
old Vaishnava songs down to those of Nidhu Babu she 
has displayed her charms from the background. But as 
in our country the wife rules her husband through 
acknowledging her dependence, so our music, though 
professedly in attendance only, ends by dominating the 
song. 

I have often felt this while composing my songs. As 
I hummed to myself and wrote the lines : 

Do not keep your secret to yourself, my love, 
But whisper it gently to me, only to me. 

t As distinguished generally from different provincial styles, 
but chiefly from the Dravidian style prevalent in the South. Tr. 



10 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

il found that the words had no means of reaching by 
themselves the region into which they were borne away 
by the tune. The melody told me that the secret, which 
I was so importunate to hear, had mingled with the 
green mystery of the forest glades, was steeped in the 
silent whiteness of moonlight nights, peeped out of the 
veil of the illimitable blue behind the horizon — and is the 
one intimate secret of Earth, Sky and Waters. 
In my early boyhood I heard a snatch of a song: 

Who dressed you, love, as a foreigner? 

This one line painted such wonderful pictures in my 
mind that it haunts me still. One day I sat down to set 
to words a composition of my own while full of this bit 
of song. Humming my tune I wrote to its accompani- 
ment: 

I know you, O Woman from the strange land! 
Your dwelling is across the Sea. 

Had the tune not been there I know not what shape 
the rest of the poem might have taken; but the magic 
of the melody revealed to me the stranger in all her 
loveliness. It is she, said my soul, who comes and goes, 
a messenger to this world from the other shore of the 
ocean of mystery. It is she, of whom we now and again 
catch glimpses in the dewy Autumn mornings, in the 
scented nights of Spring, in the inmost recesses of our 
hearts — and sometimes we strain skywards to hear her 
song. To the door of this world-charming stranger the 
melody, as I say, wafted me, and so to her were the rest 
of the words addressed. 

Long after this, in a street in Bolpur, a mendicant 
Baul was singing as he walked along: 

How doth the unknown bird flit in and out of the cage! 
Ah! could I but catch it, I'd ring its feet with my love! 



MY REMINISCENCES 11 

I found this Baul to be saying the very same thing. 
The unknown bird sometimes surrenders itself within 
the bars of the cage to whisper tidings of the bondless 
unknown beyond. The heart would fain hold it near to 
itself for ever, but cannot. What but the melody of 
song can tell us of the goings and comings of the un- 
known bird? 

That is why I am always reluctant to publish books of 
the words of songs, for therein the soul needs must be 
lacking. 

(32) The River-side. 

When I returned home from the outset of my second 
voyage to England, my brother Jyotirindra and sister- 
in-law were living in a river-side villa at Chandernagore, 
and there I went to stay with them. 

The Ganges again! Again those ineffable days and 
nights, languid with joy, sad with longing, attuned to 
the plaintive babbling of the river along the cool shade 
of its wooded banks. This Bengal sky-full of light, this 
south breeze, this flow of the river, this right royal lazi- 
ness, this broad leisure stretching from horizon to hori- 
zon and from green earth to blue sky, all these were to 
me as food and drink to the hungry and thirsty. Here 
it felt indeed like home, and in these I recognized the 
ministrations of a Mother. 

That was not so very long ago, and yet time has 
wrought many changes. Our little river-side nests, 
clustering under their surrounding greenery, have been 
replaced by mills which now, dragon-like, everywhere 
rear their hissing heads, belching forth black smoke. In 
the midday glare of modem life even our hours of men- 
tal siesta have been narrowed down to the lowest limit, 
and hydra-headed unrest has invaded every department 



12 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

of life. May be, this is for the better, but I, for one, 
cannot account it wholly to the good. 

These lovely days of mine at the riverside passed by 
like so many dedicated lotus blossoms floating down the 
sacred stream. Some rainy afternoons I spent in a verit- 
able frenzy, singing away old Vaishnava songs to my 
own tunes, accompanying myself on a harmonium. On 
other afternoons we would drift along in a boat, my 
brother Jyotirindra accompanying my singing with his 
violin. And as, beginning with the Puravi,^ we went on 
varying the mode of our music with the declining day 
we saw, on reaching the Behaga* the western sky close 
the doors of its golden toy-shop, and the moon on the 
east rise over the fringe of trees. 

Then we would row back to the landing steps of the 
villa and seat ourselves on a quilt spread on the terrace 
facing the river. By then a silvery peace rested on both 
land and water, hardly any boats were about, the fringe 
of trees on the bank was reduced to a deep shadow, and 
the moonlight glimmered over the smooth flowing 
stream. 

The villa we were living in was known as Moran's 
garden. A flight of stone-flagged steps led up from the 
water to a long, broad, verandah which formed part of 
the house. The rooms were not regularly arranged, nor 
all on the same level, and some had to be reached by 
short flights of stairs. The big sitting room overlook- 
ing the landing steps had stained glass windows with 
coloured pictures. 

One of the pictures was of a swing hanging from a 

* Many of the Hindusthani classic modes are supposed to be 
best in keeping with particular seasons of the year, or times of 
the day. Tr. 



MY REMINISCENCES 13 

branch half-hidden m dense foliage, and in the check- 
ered light and shade of this bower, two persons were 
swinging; and there was another of a broad flight of 
steps leading into some castle-like palace, up and down 
which men and women in festive garb were going and 
coming. When the light fell on the windows, these 
pictures shone wonderfully, seeming to fill the river-side 
atmosphere with holiday music. Some far-away long- 
forgotten revelry seemed to be expressing itself in silent 
words of light ; the love thrills of the swinging couple 
making alive with their eternal story the woodlands of 
the river bank. 

The topmost room of the house was in a round tower 
with windows opening to every side. This I used as my 
room for writing poetry. Nothing could be seen from 
there save the tops of the surrounding trees, and the 
open sky. I was then busy with the Evening Songs and 
of this room I wrote : 

There, where, in the breast of limitless space, clouds are laid 

to sleep, 
I have built my house for thee, O Poesy! 

(33) More About the Evening Songs. 

At this time my reputation amongst literary critics 
was that of being a poet of broken cadence and lisping 
utterance. Everything about my work was dubbed 
misty, shadowy. However little I might have relished 
this at the time, the charge was not wholly baseless. My 
poetry did in fact lack the backbone of wordly reality. 
How, amidst the ringed-in seclusion of my early years, 
was I to get the necessary material? 

But one thing I refused to admit. Behind this charge 
of vagueness was the sting of the insinuation of its being 
a deliberate affectation — for the sake of effect. The- 



14 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

iortunate possessor of good eye-sight is apt to sneer at 
.the youth with glasses, as if he wears them for orna- 
ment. While a reflection on the poor fellow's infirmity 
may be permissible, it is too bad to charge him with pre- 
tending not to see. 

The nebula is not outside creation — it merely repre- 
sents a phase ; and to leave out all poetry which has not 
attained definiteness would not bring us to the truth of 
literature. If any true phase of man's nature has found 
true expression, it is worth preserving — it may only be 
cast aside if not expressed truly. There is a period in 
man's life when his feelings are the pathos of the inex- 
pressible, the anguish of vagueness. The poetry which 
attempts its expression cannot be called baseless — at 
worst it may be worthless ; but it is not necessarily even 
that. The sin is not in the thing expressed, but in the 
failure to express it. 

There is a duality in man. Of the inner person, be- 
hind the outward current of thoughts, feelings and 
events, but little is known or recked ; but for all that he 
cannot be got rid of as a factor in life's progress. When 
the outward life fails to harmonize with the inner, the 
dweller within is hurt, and his pain manifests itself in 
the outer consciousness in a manner to which it is diffi- 
•cult to give a name, or even to describe, and of which the 
:cry is more akin to an inarticulate wail than words with 
-more precise meaning. 

The sadness and pain which sought expression in the 
Evening Songs had their roots in the depths of my being. 
As one's sleep-smothered consciousness wrestles with a 
nightmare in its efforts to awake, so the submerged inner 
•self struggles to free itself from its complexities and come 
out into the open. These Songs are the history of that 
: struggle. Ab in all creation, so in poetry, there is the 



, MY REMINISCENCES 15 

opposition of forces. If the divergence is too wide, or 
the unison too close, there is, it seems to me, no room 
for poetry. Where the pain of discord strives to attain 
and express its resolution into harmony, there does 
poetry break forth into music, as breath through a flute. 

When the Evening Songs first saw the light they were 
not hailed with any flourish of trumpets, but none the 
less they did not lack admirers. I have elsewhere told 
the story of how at the wedding of Mr. Ramesh Chandra 
Dutt's eldest daughter, Bankim Babu was at the door, 
and the host was welcoming him with the customary 
garland of flowers. As I came up Bankim Babu eagerly 
took the garland and placing it round my neck said: 
"The wreath to him, Ramesh, have you not read his 
Evening Songs?" And when Mr. Dutt avowed he had 
not yet done so, the manner in which Bankim Babu ex- 
pressed his opinion of some of them amply rewarded me. 

The Evening Songs gained for me a friend whose ap- 
proval, like the rays of the sun, stimulated and guided 
the shoots of my newly sprung efforts. This was Babu 
Priyanath Sen. Just before this the Broken Heart had 
led him to give up all hopes of me. I won him back 
with these Evening Songs. Those who are acquainted 
with him know him as an expert navigator of all the 
seven seas* of literature, whose highways and byways, 
in almost all languages, Indian and foreign, he is con- 
stantly traversing. To converse with him is to gain 
glimpses of even the most out of the way scenery in this 
world of ideas. This proved of the greatest value to me. 

He was able to give his literary opinions with the full- 
est confidence, for he had not to rely on his unaided 

* The world, as the Indian boy knows it from fairy tales and 
-folklore, has seven seas and thirteen rivers. Tr. 



16 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

taste to guide his likes and dislikes. This authoritative 
criticism of his also assisted me more than I can tell. I 
used to read to him everything I wrote at the time, and 
but for the timely showers of his discriminate apprecia- 
tion it is hard to say whether- these early ploughings of 
mine would have yielded as they have done. 

(34) Morning Songs. 

At the river-side I also did a bit of prose writing, not 
on any definite subject or plan, but in the spirit that boys 
catch butterflies. When spring comes within, many- 
coloured short-lived fancies are born and flit about in the 
mind, ordinarily unnoticed. In these days of my leisure, 
it was perhaps the mere whim to collect them which had 
come upon me. Or it may have been only another 
phase of my emancipated self which had thrown out its 
chest and decided to write just as it pleased; what I 
wrote not being the object, it being sufficient unto itself 
that it was / who wrote. These prose pieces were pub- 
lished later under the name of Vividha Prabandha, Var- 
ious Topics, but they expired with the first edition and 
did not get a fresh lease of life in a second. 

At this time, I think, I also began my first novel, 
Bauthakuranir Hat. 

After we had stayed for a time by the river, my brother 
Jyotirindra took a house in Calcutta, on Sudder Street, 
near the Museum. I remained with him. While I went 
on here with the novel and the Evening Songs, a mo- 
mentous revolution of some kind came about within me. 

One day, late in the afternoon, I was pacing the ter- 
race of our Jorasanka house. The glow of the sunset 
combined with the wan twilight in a way which seemed 
to give the approaching evening a specially wonderful 
attractiveness for me. Even the walls of the adjoining 



MY REMINISCENCES 17 

house seemed to grow beautiful. Is this upHfting of the 
cover of triviality from the everyday world, I wondered, 
due to some magic age in the evening light ? Never ! 

I could see at once that it was the effect of the evening 
which had come within me ; its shade had obliterated my 
self. While the self was rampant during the glare of day, 
everything I perceived was mingled with and hidden by 
it. Now, that the self was put into^ the background, I 
could see the world in its own true aspect. And that 
aspect has nothing of triviality in it, it is full of beauty 
and joy. 

Since this experience I tried the effect of deliberately 
suppressing my self and viewing the world as a mere 
spectator, and was invariably rewarded with a sense of 
special pleasure. I remember I tried also to explain to a 
relative how to see the world in its true light, and the 
incidental lightening of one's own sense of burden which 
follows such vision ; but, as I believe, with no success. 

Then I gained a further insight which has lasted all 
my life. 

The end of Sudder Street, and the trees on the Free 
School grounds opposite, were visible from our Sudder 
Street house. One morning I happened to be standing 
on the verandah looking that way. The sun was just 
rising through the leafy tops of those trees. As I con- 
tinued to gaze, all of a sudden a covering seemed to fall 
away from my eyes, and I found the world bathed in a 
wonderful radiance, with waves of beauty and joy swell- 
ing on every side. This radiance pierced in a moment 
through the several strata of sadness and despondency 
which had accumulated over my heart, and flooded it 
with this universal light. 

That very day the poem, The Awakening of the Water- 
fall, gushed forth and coursed on like a veritable cascade. 



18 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

The poem came to an end, but the curtain did not fall 
upon the joy-aspect of the Universe. And it came to be 
so that no person or thing in the world seemed to me 
trivial or unpleasing. A thing that happened the next 
day or the day following seemed specially astonishing. 

There was a curious sort of person, who came to me 
now and then, with a habit of asking all manner of silly 
questions. One day he had asked: "Have you, sir, seen 
God with your own eyes ?" And on my having to admit 
that I had not, he averred that he had. "What was it 
you saw ?" I asked. "He seethed and throbbed before my 
eyes !" was the reply. 

It can well be imagined that one would not ordinarily 
relish being drawn into abstruse discussions with such a 
person. Moreover, I was at the time entirely absorbed 
in my own writing. Nevertheless as he was a harmless 
sort of fellow I did not like the idea of hurting his sus- 
ceptibilities and so tolerated him as best I could. 

This time, when he came one afternoon, I actually felt 
glad to see him, and welcomed him cordially. The man- 
tle of his oddity and foolishness seemed to have slipped 
off, and the person I so joyfully hailed was the real man 
whom I felt to be in nowise inferior to myself, and more- 
over closely related. Finding no trace of annoyance 
within me at sight of him, nor any sense of my time being 
wasted with him, I was filled with an immense gladness, 
and felt rid of some enveloping tissue of untruth which 
had been causing me so much needless and uncalled for 
discomfort and pain. 

As I would stand against the verandah railing, the 
gait, the figure, the features of each one of the passers- 
by, whoever they might be, seemed to me all so extraor- 
dinarily wonderful, as they flowed past, waves on the 
sea of the universe. From infancy I had seen only with 



MY REMINISCENCES 19 

my eyes, I now began to see with the whole of my con- 
sciousness. I could not look upon the sight of two smil- 
ing youths, nonchalantly going their way, the arm of one 
on the other's shoulder, as a matter of small moment; 
for, through it I could see the fathomless depths of the 
eternal spring of Joy from which numberless sprays of 
laughter leap up throughout the world. 

I had never before marked the play of limbs and 
lineaments which always accompanies even the least 
of man's actions ; now I was spell-bound by their variety, 
which I came across on all sides, at every moment. Yet 
I saw them not as apart by themselves, but as parts of 
that amazingly beautiful greater dance which goes on at 
this very moment throughout the world of men, in each 
of their homes, in their multifarious wants and activities. 

Friend laughs with friend, the mother dandles her 
child, one cow sidles up to another and licks its body, and 
the immeasurability behind these comes direct to my mind 
with a shock which almost savors of pain. 

When of this period I wrote : 

I know not how of a sudden my heart flung open its doors. 
And let the crowd of worlds rush in, greeting each other, — 

It was no poetic exaggeration. Rather I had not the 
power to express all I felt. 

For some time together I remained in this self-forget- 
ful state of bliss. Then my brother thought of going to 
the Darjeeling hills. So much the better, thought I. On 
the vast Himalayan tops I shall be able to see better and 
more deeply into what has been revealed to me in Sudder 
Street ; at any rate I shall see how the Himalayas display 
themselves to my new gift of vision. 

But the victory was with that little house in Sudder 
Street. When, after ascending the mountains, I looked 



20 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

around, I was at once aware I had lost my new vision. 
My sin must have been in imagining that I could get 
still more of truth from the outside. However sky-pierc- 
ing the king of mountains may be, he can have nothing 
in his gift for me ; while He who is the Giver can vouch- 
safe a vision of the eternal universe in the dingiest of 
lanes, and in a moment of time. 

I wandered about amongst the firs, I sat near the falls 
and bathed in their waters, I gazed at the grandeur of 
Kinchin jinga through a cloudless sky, but in what had 
seemed to me these likeliest of places, I found it not. I 
had come to know it but could see it no longer. While I 
was admiring the gem the lid had suddenly closed, leav- 
ing me staring at the enclosing casket. But, for all the 
attractiveness of its workmanship, there was no longer 
any danger of my mistaking it for merely an empty box. 

My Morning Songs came to an end, their last echo 
dying out with The Echo which I wrote at Darjeeling. 
This apparently proved such an abstruse affair that two 
friends laid a wager as to its real meaning. My only 
consolation was that, as I was equally unable to explain 
the enigma to them when they came to me for a solution, 
neither of them had to lose any money over it. Alas! 
The days when I wrote excessively plain poems about 
The Lotus and A Lake had gone for ever. 

But does one write poetry to explain any matter? 
What is felt within the heart tries to find outside shape 
as a poem. So when after listening to a poem any one 
says he has not understood, I feel nonplussed. If some 
one smells a flower and says he does not understand, 
the reply to him is : there is nothing to understand, it is 
only a scent. If he persists, saying: that I know, but 
what does it all meanf Then one has either to change 
the subject, or make it more abstruse by saying that the 



MY REMINISCENCES 21 

scent is the shape which the universal joy takes in the 
flower. 

The difficulty is that words have meanings. That is 
why the poet has to turn and twist them in metre and 
verse, so that the meaning may be held somewhat in 
check, and the feeling allowed a chance to express itself. 

This utterance of feeling is not the statement of a 
fundamental truth, or a scientific fact, or a useful moral 
precept. Like a tear or a smile it is but a picture of what 
is taking place within. If Science or Philosophy may 
gain anything from it they are welcome, but that is not 
the reason of its being. If while crossing a ferry you 
can catch a fish you are a lucky man, but that does not 
make the ferry boat a fishing boat, nor should you abuse 
the ferryman if he does not make fishing his business. 

The Echo was written so long ago that it has escaped 
attention and I am now no longer called upon to render 
an account of its meaning. Nevertheless, whatever its 
other merits or defects may be, I can assure my readers 
that it was not my intention to propound a riddle, or 
insidiously convey any erudite teaching. The fact of 
the matter was that a longing had been born within my 
heart, and, unable to find any other name, I had called 
the thing I desired an Echo. 

When from the original fount at its core, streams of 
melody are sent forth over the universe, their echo is 
reflected into our heart off the faces of our beloved and 
the other beauteous things around us. It must be, as I 
suggested, this Echo which we love, and not the things 
themselves from which it happens to be reflected; for, 
that, which one day we scarce deign glance at, may be, 
on another, the very thing which claims our whole devo- 
tion. 

I had so long viewed the world with external vision 



22 RABINDRANATH TAGORE 

only, and so had been unable to see its universal aspect 
of joy. When of a sudden, from some innermost core 
of my being, a ray of light found its way out, it spread 
over and illuminated for me the whole universe, which 
then no longer appeared like heaps of things and hap- 
penings, but was disclosed to my sight as one whole. 
This experience seemed to tell me of the stream of 
melody issuing from the very depths of the universe and 
spreading over space and time, re-echoing thence as 
waves of joy which flow right back to the source. 

When the artist sends his song forth from the depths 
of a full heart that is joy indeed. And the joy is re- 
doubled when this same song is wafted back to him as 
hearer. If, when the creation of the Arch-Poet is thus 
returning back to him in a flood of joy, we allow it to 
flow over our consciousness, we at once, immediately, 
become aware, in an inexpressible manner, of the end 
to which this flood is streaming. And as we become 
aware our love goes forth ; and our selves are moved 
from their moorings and would fain float down the 
stream of joy to its infinite goal. This is the meaning 
of the longing which stirs within us at the sight of 
Beauty. 

The stream which comes from the Infinite and flows 
toward the finite — that is the True, the Good; it is sub- 
ject to laws, definite in form. Its echo which returns 
towards the Infinite is Beauty and Joy; which are diffi- 
cult of being touched or grasped, and so do they make 
us beside ourselves. This is what I tried to say by way 
of a parable or a song in The Echo. That the result was 
not clear is not to be wondered at, for neither was the 
attempt then clear unto itself. 

Let me set down here part of what I wrote in a letter, 
at a more advanced age, about the Morning Songs. 



MY REMINISCENCES 23 

"There is none in the World, all are in my heart" — is a state 
of mind belonging to a particular age. When the heart is first 
awakened it puts forth its arms and would grasp the whole 
world, like the teething infant which thinks everything meant 
for its mouth. Gradually it comes to understand wliat it really 
wants and what it does not. Then do its nebulous emanations 
shrink upon themselves, begin to get heated, and heat in their 
turn. 

To begin by wanting the whole world is to get nothing. When 
desire is concentrated, with the whole strength of one's being 
upon any one object whatsoever it might be, then does the gate- 
way to the Infinite become visible. The morning songs were the 
first throwing forth of my inner self outwards, and consequently 
they lack any signs of such concentration. 

This all-pervading joy of a first outflow, however, has 
the effect of leading us to an acquaintance with the par- 
ticular. The lake in its fulness seeks an outlet as a river. 
Then, instead of trying to engulf, it proceeds to taste in 
bits. In this sense the permanent later love is narrower 
than first love. It is more definite in the direction of its 
activities, desires to realize the whole in each of its parts, 
and is thus impelled on towards the infinite. What it 
finally reaches is no longer the former indefinite exten- 
sion of the heart's own inner joy, but a merging in the 
infinite reality which was outside itself, and thereby the 
attainment of the complete truth of its own longings. 

In Mohita Babu's edition these Morning Songs have 
been placed in the group of poems entitled Nishkraman, 
The Emergence. For in these was to be found the first 
news of my coming out of the Heart Wilderness into the 
open world. Thereafter did this pilgrim heart make its 
acquaintance with that world, bit by bit, part by part, in 
many a mood and manner. AInd at the end, after gliding 
past all the numerous landing steps of ever-changing im- 
permanence, it will reach the infinite, — not the vagueness 



24 RABINDRA:NATH TAGORE 

of indeterminate possibility, but the consummation of 
perfect fulness of Truth. 

From my earliest years I enjoyed a simple and inti- 
mate communion with Nature. Each one of the cocoanut 
trees in our garden had for me a distinct personality. 
When, on coming home from the Normal School, I saw 
behind the skyline of our roof-terrace blue-grey water- 
laden clouds thickly banked up, the immense depth of 
gladness which filled me, all in a moment, I can recall 
clearly even now. On opening my eyes every morning, 
the blithely awakening world used to call me to join it 
like a playmate; the perfervid noonday sky, during the 
long silent watches of the siesta hours, would spirit me 
away from the work-a-day world into the recesses of 
its hermit cell ; and the darkness of night would open 
the door to its phantom paths, and take me over all 
the seven seas and thirteen rivers, past all possibilities 
and impossibilities, right into its wonderland. 

Then one day, when, with the dawn of youth, my 
hungry heart began to cry out for its sustenance, a bar- 
rier was set up between this play of inside and outside. 
And my whole being eddied round and round my stricken 
heart, creating a vortex within itself, in the whirls of 
which its consciousness was confined. 

This loss of the harmony between inside and outside, 
due to the over-riding claims of the heart in its trouble, 
and the consequent restriction of the privilege of com- 
munion which had been mine, was mourned by me in 
the Evening Songs. In the Morning Songs I celebrated 
the sudden opening of a gate in the barrier, by what 
shock I know not, through which I regained the lost one, 
not only as I knew it before, but more deeply, more fully, 
by force of the intervening separation. 



MY REMINISCENCES 25 

Thus did the First Book of my Hfe come to an end 
with these chapters of union, separation and reunion. 
Or, rather, it is not true to say it has come to an end. 
The same subject has still to be continued through more 
elaborate solutions of worse complexities, to a greater 
finale. Each one comes here to finish but one book of 
life, which, during the progress of its various parts, 
grows spiral-wise on an ever-increasing radius. So, 
while each segment may appear different from the others 
on a cursory glance, they all really lead back to the self- 
same starting centre. 

The prose writings of the Evening Song period were 
published, as I have said, under the name of Vividha 
Prabandha. Those others which correspond to the time 
of my writing the Morning Songs came out under the 
title of Alochana, Discussions. The difference between 
the characteristics of these two would be a good index 
to the nature of the change that had in the meantime 
taken place within me. 

Translated by 

SURENDRANATH TaGORE. 



